Effort to coordinate help for homeless youths gets a boost

An effort to knit together the fragmented support system for homeless youth will get a $450,000 boost this year from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts.

For the third year, the Health Foundation will fund the Compass Project, an attempt to create a network of well-coordinated access points across the city, any one of which could connect a young person with the level of case management and services needed. Referral points include the public schools, Worcester Youth Center, the state Department of Children & Families and community agencies.

The first two years of Health Foundation funding went to developing plans and doing a pilot. This year, the Compass Project hopes to have its referral network up and running by the end of March, said Maurie Bergeron of Fitchburg-based LUK Inc. Until then, homeless youth can contact LUK at (978) 345-0685.

The $450,000 grant is the foundation's largest for this project so far and brings its total contribution to Compass to approximately $970,000 over the past three years.

“May we all work toward a future and a commonwealth where no youth is alone and homeless,” said Janice B. Yost, president and chief executive officer of the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts. She added that it is important to fix the causes of homelessness, not simply find homes for people.

Friday's announcement came at a press conference that included the release of an annual point-in-time survey of homeless youth done by the Community Roundtable on Youth Homelessness in conjunction with the Compass Project and Clark University. The survey, which for the first time took place over a week instead of a day, was done in October. It reached out to homeless and non-homeless young people at youth programs, outside of schools, in parks, on the streets and in shelters. The survey involved 753 people ages 13 to 25, and it found that at least 120 youths between the ages of 13 and 25 were homeless in the city that week, meaning they were staying in a shelter, on someone's couch or on the street. The total number was up a bit from last year's 102, but some things remained the same, such as the fact that homeless youth are more likely to have children than their peers in stable homes.

The survey also found that 64.2 percent of the homeless youth were female, 89 percent of homeless respondents were U.S. citizens, and 57 percent of the homeless respondents were staying in shelters. The most common reasons for youth not living with their parents were fights with their parents, being thrown out by a parent and wanting to leave.

Forty-three percent of the homeless youth surveyed said they received help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, making that the most common source of income for the homeless youth.

While most of the homeless youth surveyed had tried to get help, less than a third said they had received what they needed. Those in a shelter tended to be more successful connecting with services, the survey found.

Lindsay Gemmell, a caseworker with the Homeless Outreach and Advocacy Program at Community Healthlink, said services exist for homeless youth, but they are offered by a wide array of organizations that do not always coordinate. Something as simple as finding winter clothing for a client might be covered by more than one agency, she said.

Young people's needs vary substantially. While many homeless youth are pregnant or parenting, others, such as older youths who were never adopted, need a place to stay between college and graduate school, or a way to pay tuition when they age out of the state system.

State Rep. James J. O'Day, D-West Boylston, a former social worker, said that last year the state established a commission to look at services available to homeless youth, but simply figuring out how to count and define homeless youth has been a challenge. Many of them are worried about being connected to anything that qualifies as a “system,” he said. “We need to be better at engaging these young folks,” he said.

Both he and state Sen. Harriette L. Chandler, D-Worcester, are on the commission and praised the social service agencies for getting a jump start on the counting issue.

Contact Jacqueline Reis via email at jreis@telegram.com and follow her on Twitter @JackieReisTG.